Archived News:

Monday, Feb 25, 2013

This trailer offers a look at Mass Effect 3: Reckoning, the DLC being released for free tomorrow for BioWare's action/RPG sequel. BioWare also conducted their planned Twitch session today, and there's a thread on NeoGAF outlining all that was revealed along the way about the new pack. Thanks VG247. Continue here to read the full story.

IGN excerpts some news from their latest episode of Up at Noon where Telltale Game's writer Gary Whitta says: "You won’t have to wait for season two to play more Walking Dead, so there will be some additional Walking Dead gameplay to tide gamers over between the first two seasons of their Episodic series based on zombie comics/TV show. "I can tell you what you already know, which is season two is coming. There’s not much to say because it really is very early…it’s a way off," said Whitta. "But, knowing that it’s a way off, and knowing that people are hungry for more walking Dead…there may very well be more Walking Dead from Telltale before season two. We may have a little something extra for you between season one and two." He would not be pinned down on what this will be, just that it "will make the wait for season two slightly less agonizing."

While we think cross-platform play would be awesome, there are currently no plans to allow connectivity between PlayStation Network and Battle.net (this is pretty standard for most games that have PC and console support). As a result, the characters on your Battle.net account and PlayStation account will also remain separate.

In terms of allowing an analog controller hookup for the PC, we don’t have any plans for that kind of support right now. Similarly, since Diablo III for console was designed with a controller in mind, the PlayStation version of Diablo III will not support USB mice or keyboards.

Respawn Entertainments' Vince Zampella tweets that they will be attending E3, and confirms he does not mean simply as spectators, as he follows with another tweet saying "I have no intention of showing up empty handed! I can't say anything else right now." EA seems worked up by the first game from the former Call of Duty developers following their low key departure from Infinity Ward/Activision, as they retweet the first message saying "We're excited too, Vince!" This year's E3 gets underway on June 11th. Thanks nin via Kotaku.

Here's the latest turn in the cutthroat world of BioShock Infinite preorders, where coffee is for closers. Following the announcement of pre-purchase bonuses on Steam that escalate the more customers order, Greenman Gaming jumped in with their own preorder bonus offer to deescalate this competition. Now Gamefly.com has announced their own c-block (commerce block), offering those who preorder Irrational's shooter sequel the first two BioShock games, the Industrial Revolution Pack of in-game items, and a $5.00 GameFly credit for any downloadable game from 2K Games. This offer is good in North America only.

There's an informal postmortem for Aliens: Colonial Marines on Kotaku based on conversations with "people with connections to the game" since "despite weeks of fan and press requests for an explanation about what went wrong with this game, representatives from Sega and Gearbox both declined to comment for this story" (as hard as it is to imagine what form such comments would take). The takeaway continues the popular conjecture that the cultures of co-developers Gearbox and TimeGate were not in sync, with differing development and management styles. The story says TimeGate was surprised how little was complete when they took over, and in turn, Gearbox had to throw out and rework a lot of TimGate's efforts when they got it back. They also report disagreements among SEGA and the two developers over the type of game they were making, and say along the way various bits of artwork and gameplay were discarded by each developer in an effort to complete the project. There is also an explanation of why the shipping game looks worse than the E3 demo, saying it was coded for high-end PCs, and was way over "performance budget" for older PCs, much less consoles (though this is something that every game made contends with, and is usually handled with lowered graphics on consoles and quality sliders for PCs). Thanks nin.

There are new previews of Command & Conquer on Computer and Video Games, Eurogamer, IGN, PC Gamer, and Polygon, based on hands-on time with the upcoming free-to-play installment in the real-time strategy series. There are also stories on Computer and Video Games and VG247 about Victory Games' plans to support the game after launch by releasing additional content covering a mix of the various storylines explored by the series. "At the outset we’re starting out in the Generals universe with an initial set of three factions. I think the first things you’ll see come from us will be additional maps, additional game modes and additional generals to help tailor play to your own style Over time we’ll add a couple of new factions. We’re already talking about different mini-campaigns, and story-based modes that might appeal to players who are used to that more campaign-based experience," Tim Morten, senior development director tells VG247. "Longer term we’re looking at revisiting other C&C universes such as Tiberium and Red Alert, and even exploring completely new fictions. The vision is expected to continue for years and even decades down the line."

The list of Dishonored Trophies on PS3Trophies.org is updated with some newly discovered PS3 trophies for Arkane's stealth/action game which seem to reveal plans for DLC called The Other Side of the Coin (coincidentally, also the title of a DLC pack for Magicka). They list 10 trophies showing a couple of new locations in the unconfirmed add-on: Rothwild Slaughterhouse and Timsh's estate. Thanks Computer and Video Games.

Another PS3 trophy-inspired reveal on PS3Trophies shows three DLC packs are apparently planned for Need for Speed Most Wanted, Criterion Games' racing sequel. They list new trophies for a Terminal Velocity Pack, a Movie Legends Pack, and an NFS Heroes Pack. Thanks VG247.

Player Attack has a Watch_Dogs trailer from the PlayStation 4 semi-reveal, revealing an underscore in the title of Ubisoft's upcoming big brother game, and more. They note a URL hidden in the clip which leads to this site, which at first glance appears to be hacked, but a closer examination indicates this is part of the game's viral promotion. The clip includes the Latin quote: "Quis Custodiet Costodes Ipsos," which was Roman poet Juvenal's way of asking "Who will guard the guards themselves?" Or more commonly: "Who watches the watchmen?" Thanks Leon, who helpfully confirms that the domain for this website is registered to Ubisoft.

Candlelight is an upcoming platform-adventure video game. After a series of catastrophic events extinguish all candles in the land, a lone surviving candle sets out on a most important adventure to bring light back to the land. The lone candle’s journey will not be easy as it must battle through rain, wind, water, lava, TNT and more. Will the candle’s life be extinguished before the journey is complete? Only you can help determine this lands fate!

The new GfK Chart-Track List of the 20 bestselling full-priced PC games in the U.K. for the week ending February 23rd. Crysis 3 enters the chart at number one, while last week's number one, Aliens: Colonial Marines, plummets to #16. Crysis 3 also enters the all-platforms chart at number one, while A:CM drops to number five.

MrsBlue was particularly into watching the Oscars last night, so to compensate her for the thousands of hours of football she's suffered over the years I watched along (in between occasional boredom-inspired power naps). It was nice seeing Christoph Waltz and Quentin win: It's not fair to say those awards were well-deserved, since we didn't see most of the nominees, but it's hard for me to imagine any of the competitors outshined them, and obviously the voters agreed.